“Anaconda,” Jesse replied. He didn’t know if it was the guy’s name or just a code word. And at the moment, he couldn’t remember if he was Torpedo or Bomber. This must be why they sent CIA guys to spy school.
“Hop in,” Anaconda said. “We shouldn’t dawdle.” His English was perfect, with a hint of Texas twang.
Jesse moved quickly to get around the hood so he could help himself to the front seat, relegating his father to the backseat, alone. Jesse might be the minority payee, but this was his operation, and he wanted there to be no doubt. He was surprised when Davey didn’t bitch about the arrangement. Maybe he understood that first impressions were important.
As soon as the doors were closed, they were moving again. “Welcome to Veracruz,” Anaconda said.
“Are you taking us to Immigration?” Jesse asked.
Davey and Anaconda shared a hearty laugh.
“It’s the kid’s first time,” Davey said.
Anaconda gave Jesse a nervous look when he saw that they’d hurt his feelings. “No problema,” he said. “In Mexico the immigration office is for tourists. Businessmen and spies do things the old-fashioned way.” He rubbed his first two fingers against his thumb, the universal symbol for money.
“Who do you pay off?” Jesse asked.
“I tell newcomers to start with the people with badges and work their way down. The Mexican government takes a very harsh view on criminal activities that do not cut them in on the action.”
“Why should Mexico be any different than the rest of the world?” Davey quipped. “May I ask where you’re taking us?”
“You are free to ask whatever you want to know.” The hard stop made it clear that the unspoken rejoinder was, “But don’t expect an answer.”
They drove in silence out through the main gate of the airport and then onto a flat highway that threaded through the most brightly colored slums Jesse had ever seen. Buildings sported walls of red, green, blue, yellow, and orange, most of them pastel shades, perhaps from constant exposure to the blistering sun. Most were visible only above the wall that ran parallel to the highway. To Jesse’s eye, the walls were made of corrugated metal, but that couldn’t possibly be right, could it? Where he did see yards, they were packed with . . . stuff. Maybe it was valuable stuff, or maybe there was an issue with timely garbage collection. He suspected it was a combination of both.
After a few minutes, Anaconda turned right, toward the water. Given the part of the world where they were, and Jesse’s lack of confidence on where precisely they were within that slice of real estate, toward the water could have meant east or north.
The roads narrowed considerably here, and the occupation density increased dramatically. People of all ages gathered at the doorways of buildings—some commercial, some residential—talking and drinking and laughing. This was an inner-city neighborhood just like any other, but populated with people whose skin, hair, and eyes were a dozen shades darker than Jesse’s.
“Are Americans welcome in this part of the city?” Jesse asked. He heard the nervous twinge in his voice, and it annoyed him.
“Gringos, you mean?” Anaconda said with another smile. “The main rule never changes, Torpedo my friend.” He did the fingers-and-thumb thing again. “Black, white, brown don’t matter so long as the money is green.”
“Until you’ve got no more green left,” Davey chimed in from the back. “Then it can get ugly.”
Anaconda cut his eyes to the rearview mirror. “You are familiar with Mexico, Bomber?”
“For the record, I thought I was Torpedo,” Davey said. “Yes, I’m familiar with Mexico, but as I said before, the rules are constant everywhere.”
“But not in the United States,” Anaconda said without irony.
This time Davey shared his laugh with Jesse. “It’s exactly the same in the United States,” he said. “You just need to get elected to something first.”
“Where are we going?” Jesse asked. Hey, sometimes if you wanted to know, you just had to ask.
“We’re going to a place to get you started.”
“We’re here to get a boat, right?” Jesse asked.
“Don’t tell me that,” Anaconda snapped. “I don’t want to know anything about what you’re doing. My orders are to take you to a place, and then leave.”
“Who do you work for?” Davey asked.
“I work for myself. I do work for all kinds of people.”
“How did you get involved with this?” Jesse asked.
“You both ask too many questions,” Anaconda said. “I would consider it a personal favor if you would just remain quiet for the rest of this drive. It won’t be long.”
Jesse craned his neck to look back at his father, who shrugged with his eyebrows. If the driver wanted quiet, they’d give him quiet. The road seemed to take them away from the water for a while—away from civilization—before it arced back and the jungle gave way to a more urban area.
The car’s open windows brought the combined smells of the ocean and of an odd assortment of cooking foods, flora, and garbage. Jesse found it remarkable that both sides of the road were walled off, either literally with walls or with the same faded, colorful shanties that he’d noted when they left the gates of the airport. The shanties were universally a single story tall—and a short single story at that. Concrete block and corrugated steel were the most common building materials. He saw gas stations, markets, a place that looked like a plumbing supply store, and all manner of other small businesses, which seemed to be neither thriving nor distraught.
This was the Mexican middle class, he realized, and it looked a lot like what Americans called poverty. Jesse understood by driving through these parts—these tourist attractions—why locals fled across the border into the United States. The very worst parts of South Central Los Angeles would be a step up. If there were haciendas and mansions to be found in Mexico, they certainly were not here.
The scenery became steadily more urban as they drove along, and within ten minutes, the road—Jesse saw a sign that proclaimed it to be AV UNIVERSIDAD VERACRUZANA—narrowed to what would be a lane and a half in his part of the world. Here the sidewalks, shops, and even the streets teemed with people going about their day. Men, women, boys, and girls mixed with an assortment of dogs, goats, and the occasional chicken in a scrum of activity that all but stopped traffic.
Between the checkered pattern of the car and the gringo-ness of its passengers, they drew a lot of stares from the locals, but no one seemed to care much about what they saw. Jesse supposed that was a good thing.
What the hell was he getting himself into? The cloak-and-dagger shit was kind of exciting—a hell of a lot more exciting than food-stamp wages at a scrap yard—but for the first time in the twelve hours or so he’d had to think through all that was swirling around him, he was beginning to comprehend the scope of the danger they were placing themselves in.
Yeah, the plane ride was nice, but this town was a shit hole, he didn’t speak the language, and he was allowing himself to be driven to an unknown location by an unknown driver who clearly feared knowing why they were here. Moment by moment, this was seeming like a worse and worse idea.
But he had no choice. As he understood things, the only route home was by a boat that he didn’t yet have.
Yeah, what could possibly go wrong?
Roughly an hour after they’d set out from the airport, Anaconda slowed his car in front of a shanty with a roll-up door to one side. A shanty with a garage, it would seem. “This is it,” he said.
Jesse scowled. “What is what?”
“This is the place I was told to bring you to. Just climb out, and I’ll be on my way.”
Davey had already opened his door in the back and was climbing out.
“Wait,” Jesse said. “This is it? What are we supposed to do now?”
“Hey, kid,” Davey called from the other side. “We’ll figure it out.”
“I’ve done everything I know to do,” Anaconda said
. “Now you need to leave.”
Jesse didn’t like this at all. It felt too much like a setup. Too many variables and no known constants.
“Come on, kid,” Davey said. “The worst that can happen is we die today. At least we got to ride on a snazzy jet.”
Something about the comment set Jesse at ease. It was the delivery, classic Davey. In Davey’s world, no situation was so bad that it had to be taken seriously. Because, as he would say, what’s the worst that could happen?
Jesse opened his door, slid out, and closed it again. The latch had barely set before Anaconda was on his way.
“Twitchy little guy, isn’t he?” Davey asked.
“So, what are we supposed to do now?” Jesse asked.
Davey cocked his head and looked at him.
“What?”
Davey chuckled and shook his head as he turned to the overhead door and lifted it. “We see what’s inside,” he said.
Jesse felt stupid. He really should have thought of that on his own.
As the door rose, a growing rectangle of light revealed a beater of an old powder-blue Toyota sedan, pulled backward into the space.
“Mother Hen said there would be instructions for us,” Jesse said. “Look for a letter or something.” He pulled a click-on penlight from his pants pockets and shone the beam through the open windows of the car. He heard the click of a switch, and an overhead fluorescent light flickered to life. As it came up to strength, Davey pulled the overhead door down.
With the door closed, it would become unbearably hot very quickly.
Jesse went back to scouring the interior of the vehicle for some kind of instructions, but it was clean—a hell of a lot cleaner than the inside of Anaconda’s car.
“Check the glove box,” Davey suggested.
Jesse leaned in, pressed the button, and the glove-box door dropped open to reveal a satellite phone that was only slightly larger and thicker than an old-school cell phone. “I think I found it,” Jesse said.
He thumbed the POWER button, and as it went through its booting cycle, Davey asked, “Did this Mother Hen babe give you a number to call?”
Jesse shook his head. “No. She said everything would make sense.”
“Even though nothing really does,” Davey said.
The phone booted, and then it buzzed in his hand. Jesse looked at the screen and chuckled. “Well, how about that? We missed a call.”
With the missed call on the display screen, Jesse pushed the SEND button and then the SPEAKER button.
After three rings, a familiar female voice said, “Who’s calling?”
“It’s Jess—”
Davey made a grunting sound and a slashing motion across his throat. Stop.
“Oh,” Jesse said. “This is Torpedo and Bomber.”
“So you made it,” Mother Hen said. “Glad to hear it. Welcome to Mexico.”
“You have instructions for us?” Jesse asked. He appreciated the fact that Davey was letting him do all the talking.
“For now, the instructions are to wait,” Mother Hen said. “Keep the sat phone with you, and when we need the next step, we’ll let you know.”
“It’s hotter than hell in this garage,” Jesse said. “How long do you expect we’ll have to wait?”
A beat. “Isn’t there a house attached to the garage?”
Davey pointed to a door in the wall on the driver’s side—the side where he was standing—and opened it.
“Oh,” Jesse said. “Yeah, there’s a house.”
“Then, I recommend you wait there. You should find some provisions in the kitchen. Check the fridge. You’ll find a supply of drinking water, too.”
“Okay, then,” Jesse said. “So, there’s no additional preparations or anything you want us to make while we wait?”
“Get some rest,” Mother Hen said. “You’ll need it.”
CHAPTER 24
This part of Northern Virginia had never made much sense to Gail. Somehow, Annandale morphed into Alexandria, which in turn morphed into Seven Corners and Bailey’s Crossroads. And then there was Falls Church, sort of threaded through it all. If there were boundaries, she didn’t know what they were, and if she were to guess, she would be wrong more than she was right. But these neighborhoods were the epicenter of midlevel federal government workers who valued short commutes over community cosmetics. The neighborhoods had a certain charm to them, she supposed, but the seventy-plus-year-old home styles were not for her. Throw in the teardowns that had been replaced by obscene mansion wannabes, and the resulting mix was unpleasant.
Of course, that unpleasantness sold for about five hundred dollars per square foot these days, so clearly, she was not the smart one.
The house she was looking for was nestled in a tree-lined cluster of mostly brick but occasionally stone houses. There was nothing exceptional about the place. The trees and shrubs were woefully overgrown and under cared for, as were most of the neighbors’. The egos in Washington being what they were, Gail figured that maybe an unkempt yard was a status symbol of sorts, a way of showing the world that you were far too busy dealing with lofty matters of national security to waste time trimming bushes.
Yeah, she had a problem with cynicism. Must have something to do with tracking down lobbyists who killed people.
Gail slowed as she drove past Yolanda Cantata’s house. She noted the car in the driveway—an unexceptional black sedan—and the fact that a light was on in an upstairs window. Smart money said the lady of the house was home. But was she alone?
Gail turned right at the end of the block, in foolish anticipation of finding curb parking nearby. As it turned out, she needed to drive another two blocks to find an open space. She parallel parked between a late-model BMW and an ancient Oldsmobile that looked like it was held together by Bondo.
As gorgeous as Washington and its burbs were in the autumn and spring, they offered little more than oppressive heat and humidity in the summer. By the time Gail walked to the end of the first block, she could already feel a drop of sweat tracing its way down the middle of her back. A distant ache behind her eyes reminded her that she’d allowed herself to fall behind on her pain meds. Her hand worked from muscle memory to pull her stylish silver pill case from the pocket of her jeans. She flipped the flat, square container open, removed a yellow pill, and dry swallowed it.
The headaches and the limp were the primary reminders of the savage beating she’d taken the last time she worked for the dark side of Security Solutions. The face that stared back at her from the mirror every morning was still attractive, she thought, despite the scar, but she worried that any infirmity would broadcast all kinds of bad signals to possible suitors.
As long as she didn’t fall too far behind on the meds, the headaches remained small, and she stayed fully functional. But it was a delicate dance.
It was a little after eight o’clock when Gail turned the last corner onto Yolanda Cantata’s block. It wasn’t dark yet, but it would be within the next half hour or so. The street was empty, as too many suburban streets were these days, since children had traded active play for video games. Some of her fondest memories from her girlhood were nights like this, when she and the neighborhood kids would play curb ball in the street until it became too dark to see and then would sit on a porch or under a streetlight, talking until parental units called everyone in for the night.
Okay, maybe she was getting old.
The generic black sedan in Yolanda’s driveway proved to be a Chevy. It was parked where it was because there were no garages in this neighborhood. The walkway to the front door paralleled the driveway for the first thirty feet or so, and as Gail passed the driver’s side door, she noticed a spot on the worn white concrete of the driveway that intrigued her.
Is that blood?
Checking over her shoulders to verify that she was not being watched, she moved closer to the car and stooped to her haunches. She squinted and leaned closer to the ground. Just outside the driver’s door, she clea
rly saw a crown-shaped splatter. The color was red on its way to brown. On closer examination of the ground, she saw more splatters.
Taking care to touch nothing, Gail rose to her full height and peered through the window into the car’s interior. In here, the blood had smeared on the gray leather upholstery, with a heavy concentration along the line where the seat met the seat back.
“Did I do that?” Gail wondered aloud. Was it possible that her wildly fired shots had actually found a target?
She scanned again for nosy neighbors, then moved back to the walkway. She kept her eyes trained to the flagstone. Once you knew what you were looking for, following a blood trail was easy. A consistent trail of blood drops led down the flagstone walkway, up the concrete steps, and then to the front door, where she noted a dozen or more drops. In her mind, this was the spot where Yolanda—or Nicole Alvarez—had stood and bled as she found her key to the door.
Gail wasn’t sure about the next step. She could knock on the door, but that didn’t seem right. In the best case, she’d alert a bleeding shooter that someone was there. That was the worst case, too. The alternative, she supposed, would be to break into a shooter’s house and risk what followed. The only smart move was to step away and call the police, but that wouldn’t give her the information she needed. It also would open the door to a lot of questions she didn’t want to answer, starting with the most basic of all: Why was she here?
“Goddammit, Digger. I hate you,” she mumbled as she fished a pair of latex gloves from a little pouch on her belt and put them on. Whatever lay ahead, leaving fingerprints could only make things worse.
With her hands covered, she drew her Glock with her right and grasped the doorknob with her left. Her heart skipped a beat when the knob turned easily. There went her last face-saving excuse not to take the next step.
The loaded chamber tab on her Glock assured her that she had a round in the battery, but she did a press check, just to be sure. She pulled the slide back less than a quarter of an inch and was rewarded with the sight of the shiny brass shell casing she’d been hoping to see. She eased the slide forward again and then bumped on the back end to make sure the bullet seated into battery. That gave her seven in the weapon, and another twelve, divided between two spare mags, the second a gift from John Sacco.
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